Ep 176 Chaser – Drew Haverstock on PEDs PT and Career Changes

In this episode with Drew Haverstock, we discuss Pediatric Physical Therapy, Drew’s career change shortly before his wedding, business, passion, and Spiderman as inspiration. Drew and Jimmy are drinking a Gin and Tonic and Vodka Soda, respectively, despite recording Pintcast.

Bio: Drew Haverstock, PT

Drew left the business world in 1997 to return to school and pursue his dream of becoming a Physical Therapist. While he thought that he’d wind up working in sports or outpatient orthopedics during his education at UIC, he fell in love with working with children somewhere along the way. After a series of pediatric jobs in Illinois EI and at local hospitals, Drew decided to start his own company, Milestone Therapy, in 2002. Initially doing solely Early Intervention, the company has grown in the past 10 years to include all major pediatric disciplines for EI in both Illinois and Indiana. In addition, MST now works with over 30 different school districts throughout the Chicago-land area. A clinic was started in November, located in Crown Point, Indiana to service the children in that area as well. While the business end of things can be time consuming, Drew’s passion still lays with treating children on a day-to-day basis. ‘Helping a kid learn how to take their first steps makes it easy to get out of bed every morning.’

(1:52) Helping a kid learn how to walk makes it easy to get out of bed every single morning.

(2:20) Jimmy and Drew discuss their similarities to “unicorns.”

(3:50) “I get to walk in and rather than just reading the paper…I ask them to tell their story.”

(4:12) “All they’ve heard is ‘No, no, no’ or ‘This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong’, then I am the guy that gets to walk in and say, ‘Well, I can’t promise you it will happen, but I will tell you, if we don’t start trying right now, it’s never going to happen.’”

(4:48) “As all the students here are learning: Everything is Rehabilitative…In our world in PEDs, it is all Habilitative – it is the first time these kids are ever learning how to do this.”

(5:05) “It’s an entirely different mindset when you go at things and you’re almost trying to prevent bad habits from occurring and encouraging the right patterns to emerge rather than just getting them back to where they were.”

(6:15) You were engaged to be married and then decided to go back to school and become a PT, how did that go down?

(6:43) What kind of business was it?

(7:01) “With all the stuff I learned there, all the times I stubbed my toe learning how to do things, I was able to take a lot of that knowledge and use it to help springboard what I did at Milestone.”

(9:00) “…If it’s going to be steered into an iceberg, I am going to be driving.”

(10:00) “…I kind of took that as part of my mission to make sure to take care of those that might be underserved.”

(10:30) How long did you go back and forth doing both jobs before you were able to just stick to the one?

(11:20) Why do PEDs PT’s get paid less?

(12:52) So you are sending your therapists into school districts? They are not employed by the school district, they are employed by you?

(13:00) Is that state by state? County by county? District by district?

(13:13) “I’m like a gateway drug.”

(13:45) What are you doing and how many days a week if someone is on maternity leave?

(14:07) “PT in the schools is a little bit more gray. You’ve got three different models.”

(17:00) What’s with the conveyor belt? What do you mean?

(17:37) You’ve got a big chart of apps – whose idea was that?

(19:37) “There’s no book out there that tells you how to get from point A to point B.”

(23:20) You are doing something now with Vistage – what is that?

(24:52) “Anybody who owns their own practice and thinks they know it all is doomed to fail.”

(28:30) A great Steve Jobs quote – “I didn’t hire all you smart people to tell you what to do, I hired all you smart people to help tell me what to do.”

(28:52) If you could go anywhere else in the country and be a PT, where would you want to go?

(29:13) What’s something you’ve read recently that has inspired you?

(30:35) Who is somebody in the field of physical therapy that is flying under the radar? Somebody that we should know more about?

(34:05) As a second career guy, if I was going to change, it was going to be for something that I loved.

(35:40) “I can get paid to talk about Spiderman and help a little kid learn how to walk.”

#partingshots

Don’t ever mistake activity for accomplishment. You have to know how to work smarter, not harder, to accomplish your goals.